Foundations of public law / Martin Loughlin.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [467]-510) and index.

Rediscovering public law -- Part I. Origins -- Medieval origins -- Birth of Public Law -- part II. Formation -- Architecture of public law -- Science of political right I -- Science of political right II -- Political jurisprudence -- part III. State -- Concept of the State -- Constitution of the State -- State Formation -- part IV. Constitution -- Constitutional contract -- Rechtsstaat, the rule of law, l'etat de droit -- Constitutional rights -- part V. Government -- Prerogatives of government -- Potentia -- New architecture of public law.

"Foundations of Public Law offers a distinctive, provocative theory of public law, building on the views first outlined in The Idea of Public Law (OUP, 2003). The theory aims to identify the essential character of public law, explain its particular modes of operation, and specify its unique task. Public law is conceived broadly as a type of law that comes into existence as a consequence of the secularization, rationalization and positivization of the medieval idea of fundamental law. Formed as a result of the changes that give birth to the modern state, public law establishes the authority and legitimacy of modern governmental ordering. Public law today is a universal phenomenon, but its origins are European. Part I of the book examines the conditions of its formation, showing how much the concept borrowed from the refined debates of medieval jurists. Part II then examines the nature of public law. Drawing on a line of juristic inquiry that developed from the late-sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries - extending from Bodin, Althusius, Lipsius, Grotius, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke and Pufendorf to the later works of Montesquieu, Rousseau, Kant, Fichte, Smith and Hegel" --Provided by publisher.